


Sunlightverse - Babies

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Sunlightverse [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Babies, Eggpreg, F/M, Fluff, Grubs, Human/Troll Hybrids, Humor, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamory, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1811347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So at some point the pantheon had to start reproducing, right? That goes awesomely when two thirds of their numbers used to be from a species that has nothing to do with their children.</p><p>Series of ficlets and vignettes on various pregnancy and baby related topics.</p><p>(Sunlightverse is a collection of fics where the players and Ancestors become gods of a merged species in a pseudo-Ancient-Greece society.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dad/Grand Highblood, introducing them to Jane

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder that the Ancestors in this fic are a fanon cast; when I started writing this story only Meenah and Aranea had appeared, and not a lot at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: dad/grand highblood oh god why (3) what. how. anyway. kid related prompt: john and jane react to their new siblings perhaps? dad what. dad. how. there are no words. dad. your kids with darkleer and the handmaid we saw coming. but. the grand highblood? dad. wait. why are you asking us to babysit?

"Jane, dearest."

Jane looks up from the flour she was grinding up finer in a hurry. She has heard her father sound perfectly calm and unruffled most of her life -- steady tone, variations there, but subtle at best. This is more like the way he sounded after her first assassination attempt.

He's standing before her window, three roly-poly babies gathered awkwardly in his arms like he just scooped himself up an armful and came stomping over. She hurries to push the front door of her home wide open.

When she tries to take one of them from his arm, ey bites down.

Things rapidly go downhill from there, metaphorically and not. The frantic babies start struggling anew, slip. Jane's father rushes ahead and they all end up landing in a barely controlled tumble in her laundry basket.

"... They're fine," he says a couple of seconds later.

"I'll get the playpen set up," Jane says, and goes to look in the cupboard under the stairs. She makes sure to keep her voice calm when she asks, "Where did they come from?"

Maybe her father found them. There's no shortage of foundlings around here, really.

She emerges from the dark cupboard and it's still dim outside, because a wall of an ex-troll is blocking her kitchen window almost entirely.

"You want I get back what's mine now in the way where you still have a hive standing afterwards?" he rumbles. The babies squeak; one of them starts waving to be picked up enthusiastically.

"Do not," Jane's father breathes, "put a _finger_ on my daughter's house."

The Grand Highblood bends down to rest his elbows on her windowsill in a way that must strain his back awfully, and arches an eyebrow at her dad. "Whoops."

Her dad's eyelids twitch. "You know what I mean. She is not involved."

"You just up and motherfucking involved her."

"They're her sisters!"

... Jesus. What? She glances back at the children, and _glances_ , deeper.

All three of them are steeped in Rage. But behind that...

She looks at her father (he looks angry, he looks embarrassed, and she can see it on his face. She's an adult now, has been a while, but seeing her father as a _person_ is still and always will be a shock.)

She looks at the horroshow of a man at the window.

She groans. "Oh, dad, what did you _do_."

The Grand Highblood snorts like she just said a good joke. "Me, most fucking vigorously."

" _Algedi!_ " Jane's dad snaps. He then takes a deep breath, forces himself calm again. "I do not propose she _keep_ them. But the discussion we must have will go more smoothly if we do not have to mind them at the same time. This is the most logical--"

"You went swooping down at 'em right off my feet and now you preach logical noise at me? No, brother, you get your snarl on good and proper, that be less of the blatant bald-faced lie."

He smiles. It's a really wide, really pleased, really _evil_ smile. It's not even because of all the teeth.

The babies are chirping in pleasure every time his voice rolls like distant thunder through their bones. Their horns are lost in a ridiculous mass of hair, but one of them, she sees, has the same forehead-rooted nubs as her dad's.

"I refuse to have an altercation in front of children. Especially mine. That is a dreadful example to give." His fists firm. "We will be leaving them with Jane, and we will go and discuss the situation elsewhere. Jane, my apologies for springing this on you. Algedi, I'll be right out."

"Naw, brother, we might as well get our talk on here. Since fucking ain't a thing as happen ever again with us, so say your fucking self." The Grand Highblood's smiles sharpens. "So you can tell me as how those motherfuckers are yours even a little bit, where you wet your bulge for five minutes and I brood a gutful for five months, and up and carry that big-ass stupid egg for five more, and feed 'em hence of my own motherfucking hands."

He spreads his huge mitts open over Jane's kitchen top, vicious claws fanned out.

"I might have contributed more had you seen fit to _tell me_."

"I might have told at you," the Grand Highblood retorts, mimicking his voice like he's a mean ten year old child, "but see, you told at me, that was a dreadful mistake, let's never mention it again." He shrugs. "Kind of was the truth of it, too, a mistake. You're a lousy lay."

"I was drunk, or I would have been no kind of lay to you at all!" Her father blinks, pinches the bridge of his nose. Is he blushing? Jane doesn't know if she wants to stare or bury herself in her garden from shared mortification. "My apologies, Jane. Let's go."

He stomps out of her door. The Grand Highblood, stil looking satisfied, pushes away from her windowsill. Behind her the babies are climbing each other to get over the edge of the laundry basket.

"Wait!"

The Grand Highblood pauses, tilts his head to peer down through her window. "Hm?"

"Do they have names?"

"Of fucking course they are named, what heathen you up and take me for? The most vicious be Saanen, and best-horned be Damani, and hungriest be Kamori."

She blinks. The descriptions are... well, but the names themselves are _pretty_. She wasn't expecting that. "Ah. Thanks." She nods. On impulse she adds, "I'll keep them safe."

"Even from me, should you think it fucking necessary," he retorts, cynical, eyes gleaming like he's daring her to amuse him that way.

"Algedi!" her father calls from farther away. The Grand Highblood growls under his breath and straightens up.

"For one as don't wish to share intimacy with me, you're a glib motherfucker when up and comes chance to using my most private of names at a holler."

They disappear around a corner.

She puts one of the kids back in the laundry basket, finishes setting up the playpen, puts them all down in it, and then she types up a quick message for John to come and find her, quick. Someone needs to tell him before he gets blindsided by their father and that great brute hate-macking in public.


	2. Dave/Jade/Karkat: Naming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: Jade/Dave/Karkat, for the kids thing! um, choosing names. For the prompt. Thank you! ^u^

"Can't we just, I mean, since _we_ are articulate, wouldn't it make perfect sense to wait for the first sound they make and name them from that?"

Jade and Dave stare at Karkat in unison.

"What."

Jade looks baffled, though not as blankly horrified as Dave. "Are you telling us that's how your dad named you? He waited until you made a sound?"

"No! He was the one who made the sound when he picked me up, a sound which he thereafter used to refer to me, which _makes it my name_. The census drone put it down in writing. Why the fuck are you staring, it's a perfectly logical way to do it!"

"Yeah uh no. I am vetoing like a veto king, you won't have my vote, yo, I'mma strike your -- Jade, what rhymes with king?"

She rolls her eyes. Her boyfriends are dweebs. Both of them.

"Both of you are vetoed, anyway. You can name them when you've brooded them, that's the rule! No, Dave, I won't name any of our kids Cheerio. Anyway I already have the best names."

"... You do?" they chorus doubtfully. She pouts at them.

"Kelv, Newt and Fara! After the Baron Kelvin, Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday. Three great scientific minds that deserve to be remembered!"

"Also it'll make a theme with Bec," Dave replies, cynical. "Don't think we haven't noticed. No wool over _these_ eyes, babe."

"Uh, yeah, we totally noticed," Karkat adds in a way that means he noticed jack shit, but then again what does he know about Earth scientists, right. "I guess they're not ugly, though, but I really don't know about naming my offspring after barkbeasts."

"Pff, it was totally Bec who had a human name."

"Blah. Fine, okay."

Dave still looks a bit frowny, but Fara's green-spotted red egg wobbles as she kicks inside it, and he goes gooey all at once.

"... I'm vetoing Newt, though. It is a nerdy name. I can not abide having a nerd for a son."

Jade huffs. "Aw, come on! Nerds are totally cool."

Boom, clash of the incompatible world views.

Sighing, Karkat goes, "What was that guy's full name... Isak Newtsomething? Just go with Isak. Bam, dispute mediated. You get a cool sound," he makes the irony crochets with his fingers, "and _you_ get the right meaning, topic closed."

Jade pouts for another minute before she accepts that Isak doesn't actually sound too bad. Now which of the boys is going to be which... They could probably decide that after they hatch, maybe.

"I just wish you'd even consider a longer name. Your human names are just so short... Oh well. I guess I can give my batch proper names when they come."

The horrified look Dave sends Karkat sends Jade into spasms of laughter.

"What? I'm not saying I'll have them right now, but it didn't look that hard when Jade was doing it. Why not?"

"Famous last words," she sings as Dave crumbles into a mumbling puddle of outdated manhood notions, and she kisses Karkat's nose over the egg basket.


	3. Gamzee/Roxy(/Calliope) - Before the Conception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said: gamzee/roxy(/calliope), discussing how their kid will be raised and who the main caregivers are going to be

"So umm yeah."

His pale-assed curly sis is sprawled all over his chest. At first Gamzee doesn't want to lift his head to look at her, too tired with pleasure, and then he hears her tone, all uneasy, and he _really_ doesn't.

If he wasn't stuck under her this is where he would wave and abscond until the next time, he thinks. But if he tosses her off him she might break it off, and also his palebro has been at him to brave things a bit more and it'd be miraculous how most of the time nothing bad would happen, even.

"Hmm?"

She's got a mess of curls stuck in the forks of her horns. He plucks them free; it's better than looking at her face, than noticing the way she won't look at him straight on either.

"You remember how I get to frick-frack you because Callie doesn't do the fricking thing?"

"Girl still has her needs," Gamzee returns as placidly as he can. "So what you be telling at me, sis, she find it in herself to ride your bulge after all?"

Roxy rolls her eyes, taps his chest in lazy admonishment. "Um, hell to the no. She still thinks it's gross and ew. I'm not breaking up with you, stupid."

Gamzee blinks slowly. "...Oh." Blink. "Cool." Well, can't be that bad then. "She, uh, want to get her ganderbulbs on us or...?"

"Oh my god."

He thinks he's said something stupid until she starts giggling against his chest. Then he knows he's said something stupid, but in the good way.

"Noooo! Hell fucking no, bro, I don't even want her to look at us, I mean, exhib' is kinda sexy but not with Callie! I'd straight-up die, I think. Seriously you should stop guessing."

"I'd stop guessing if you started telling," Gamzee grumbles, and prods her in the ribs. "Flap your maw at me so much as you want, but make with the meaning already."

"Blurgh. Okay." She breathes in deep. "See uh."

"See what?"

Roxy melts on his chest and whimpers. He pats her back. It's starting to get a little funny.

"Uuugh."

"Whoa, that is one straight-up dose of righteous enlightenment."

"Makara, you bitch."

He grins down at her. She laughs.

"Okay, fine! Callie and I want babies. Uh. Grubs?"

Uh, okay. "I don't rightly know as to why you're getting your tell on at me...? Only I thought that was like hells of flush, and we're only a little flush. Like. we told at each other again and afuckinggain your main motherfucker was gonna be green skull sis for always?"

Roxy pushes herself up, hands planted flat on his chest. Oof. Hard to breathe.

"Earth to Gamzee Makara! She can't fuck them into me if she won't fuck me, can she?!"

"Oh." He gets briefly distracted by her bouncing rumble spheres. He likes how pale they are, how pink the nipple. Such weird, miraculous colors his little flushbuddy comes in.

Roxy sighs, and then squeezes her arms together and wiggles her tits at him. Gamzee grins.

"Okay, okay. You be having a thought of ..."

... Of... Oh. Huh. Is he getting it wrong? Only it seems kind of...

"Of you fucking an egg into me," she barks, all pink-embarrassed, "and then I'll go and raise the wigglers with Callie. Um, but you're totally welcome to be the kids' weirdo uncle or even kind of their dad if you wanna, just, Callie and I will be raising them more. ...Yeah?"

"Oh. Huh."

He's ...

He doesn't know how he feels about that. It's like his thoughts are approaching a feelings zone that might be dangerous, so the miraculous little fuckers just bounce right over it like it's a hole in the floor or some shit like that.

As a troll he would never have had to raise his descendents, but it might have been funny to meet one, maybe eat some pies with them, talk about the universe. The people they are now...

He feels like he's his own lusus, fucking off for parts unknown as his wiggler wails alone on the beach.

"Gamzee? Um, you okay?"

She's peering at his face, all sweet and worried and cute. He pats her glutes. "I don't rightly know, sis." Shit. It feels all coily-twisty in his guts, and experience has taught him that often that feeling comes back out like a hungry motherfucking seagoatdad bursting out of the depths. "Is -- is it okay if I talk it out with my palebro first. Like. Is that a thing as can be happening."

Roxy goes all soft and pale-ish on him, and she brushes hair off his face all nice. "Of course, you big lug. You talk at him as much as you want. Maybe play with his kids, see what you think about those? You could play with ours as much as you want, too, unless they're like asleep or sick or something. It could be pretty cool? Anyway um. Take the time you need, we ain't in a hurry."

"Mnh." He wraps his arms around her and hides his face between her breasts.

Could be nice. He wouldn't leave the wigglers alone-alone, anyway. Calliope-sis is a good girl, and so is Roxy. Wouldn't be on him.

It still sits oddly under his ribs. He's unsure.

"... Wonder what their horns would up and look like?" He imagines a mess of tentacular waves rising from a grub's head, and snorts out a laugh against her chest.

She laughs right back. "Shit, that's nothing, what about their hair? My curls and yours? And what if they get like white and black locks of hair. Stripes! Polka dots!"

"Shit, yeah, haha, that's the shit. And like my eyes and yours and it all looks honest to messiahs _fishblooded_."

He motorboats her tits as she giggles and emerges grinning, and he sits.

"Yeah, okay, I'mma get my thinkpan hella steamed up about it."

"And talk with Karkat!" she says from his lap.

"Yeah, yeah."

Shit, but she's so nice to have as a matesprit. Won't ask feelings too deep from him, it's all just happiness and sexy fun. It's good. It's been good for him. Might be it gets good for a wiggler too? Maybe.

He ain't sure about the rest still, but at least the getting that egg up in her part sounds like it might do it for him.


	4. John/Vriska - conflict & naming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tanukikyle said: John/Vriska, conflicts over parenting? *U* (are there any?)  
> (hahaha haaaaaaaa orz)
> 
> adiduck said: John/Vriska, name selection

"I can't wait until that thing is out and I can foist it off on Fussyfangs or something," Vriska groans as she sits down beside John on the low stone wall.

The eggs grow fast in the first weeks, true. John himself is still all kinds of freaked out about it, and already ready for it to be over, and they're only a bit over one month in. (Why did they not think to check their cycles. _Why_.) (Oh right, John still gets hives thinking of himself as _having_ cycles.)

It still makes him feel all odd and shivery and -- some kind of happy-nervous combination, to look at himself and Vriska side by side with matching tummy speed bumps.

He laughs. "Oh god, me too. I'll get Dad to babysit the egg at _least_ a week."

"A week? Try _forever_." She sighs, stretches a foot cautiously into a patch of light. "I guess your lusus is used to it. Do you think he'd want mine too? That'd be kind of a lot at once, but he's got to be pretty good at it by now. Also he's strong enough to make sure they live until they can defend themselves, I suppose."

"Pff." He rolls his eyes at her playfully. "They'll be fun once they're born!"

He's reclining on his hands, enjoying the sunlight on his tired body, and she sits as most trolls do in the shade of the great blue tree, so it takes him a while and some squinting to make out the expression on her face.

It's... It's not pleasant.

"You're planning to _keep them_ ," she says, low, almost horrified.

"You're _not_?!"

It only goes downhill from there.

\------

No one really knows why, since they got knocked up on the same day, but John lays his own egg two days before Vriska does.

It's long enough for him to recuperate a little ("it's not as big as a human baby, John! and do you want to try a triplet egg next time? I thought not!") and start learning about his children in there (one boy, one girl, both in perfect health.)

He has two days to get used to his egg (he's not used to it) and then it's Vriska's turn.

They haven't really gotten along in a few months now but he's there anyway, letting her crush his hand as she refuses to scream at all.

(He was prepared to ignore her ranting and raving about doing this to her and how much she hates him but she doesn't even say that much.)

Both eggs are blue, speckled with some more blue, only hers is lighter and the spots darker, and his is the other way around. He cleans and buffs the shell and then he carries the egg to the carrier to be with its egg-sib.

When everyone who was there to help and feed them has cleared out John peeks into her bedroom. If she's asleep he wants to sit by her.

She's getting dressed.

She can barely stand, she's so stiff, but she's getting dressed.

"Vriska?"

She doesn't turn around. Her shoulders pulled back like she's going to war, but she can't turn and look at John straight on.

"You still not giving them away?" she asks, like maybe she hopes a little bit even though she knows better. John tries not to get angry.

It's not Vriska's fault she grew up in a society where adults had nothing to do with raising children, when being raised by wild beasts was fine and you only had to worry about yourself and your quadrants and the closest you could get to pregnancy was a gutful of intestinal parasites.

It's not her fault but it's not _fair_ that Karkat and Psii and Signless and Disciple and Kanaya took to it in the end and she won't even try.

"No." A pause. He forces out a "Sorry."

"Mnh."

She sits on the bed, grunts when she pulls her boots on.

"Where are you going?"

"I _told_ you I wasn't going to share my matesprit and my hive with four grubs, John, what did you think I meant?"

"It's not like you'll have to do any parenting!" he retorts, voice rising despite himself.

She flips around like a viper and she's standing now, facing him. "Oh, _really_? So you'll never ask me to watch them _just one minute, Vriska, you can do that much, right_ , and try to manipulate me into lususing them more like it's something i can be tricked into? And they'll never climb on me and barf on me and yell when I want to sleep and be asleep when I want to dance?!"

" _How can you be so fucking selfish?!_ "

" _I never asked for them!_ " she yells back, " _I was fine giving them to someone who would actually want them _, why should I force myself_!_ " and he knows the argument so well by now he could say her lines along with his.

He doesn't know how -- maybe because this time there's a backpack at her feet fallen from the cupboard, but they both go quiet, rein their anger in.

"I'm not leaving for good," she says abruptly. "When they're grown, I'll come back. Might visit, too, I don't know."

"Where are you going?" he says quietly.

She shrugs, bends to pick up the bag, shoulders it. A long lock of hair falls across her spider eye.

"Anywhere. Traveling. I've wanted to explore for years. It's been fun around here, John, but always the same islands was getting pretty dull."

And he wanted to lock her in even closer to home. He's surprised she didn't leave before.

He's surprised she didn't go down to the village and abort them and run. She wanted to, he can tell. With how shackled she must have felt it's a surprise she even endured it that long.

She did that for him, because he asked. He wonders if he's the selfish one, wishing she could have sacrificed more. It's...

It's just not in her to live this life. Wishing she were different is...

"At least name them before you go," he says. "Give them at least this. It's going to hurt them bad enough to learn how much their mother doesn't _care_." He doesn't know what makes him say the rest, some spark of pain, of his own pre-game years never quite believing the meteor story, wondering who his mother was, why she'd left him behind, whether she abandoned him or dared to die on him. "If you can't even do that much, don't bother to come back."

Vriska's face twists like he stabbed her, but the pain is only a flash before she forces it into rage,

"Avrisk and Kirvas," she snaps.

And of course her arrogance comes roaring back. "Wow," he says, rolling his eyes, "come on, you don't even want them, but you're still going to name them after you?"

" _Avrisk. Kirvas._ Good _bye_ , John."

She stalks by him, chin held high, and then she's gone and he's alone with two eggs, four babies.

He's so _mad_ and he doesn't know how to stop loving her by now, or he would.

... Maybe he wouldn't, at that, which only makes him feel like a chump.

He goes to sit in front of his eggs. He feels stupid and alone. It hurts. The eggs are some comfort, but aren't that great at making the house feel less empty. He tries talking to them, finds that he has nothing to say. Nothing constructive, at least. He doesn't want to make excuses for Vriska to them, and ranting about her would be even worse, no matter how much they don't understand right now. It's not a habit he is ever going to get into.

It's almost midnight. He gets planks of wood out of the pile outside and spends the next hour sanding them down to satin softness. It's the first stop to making a cradle.

\------

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] started pestering arachnidsGrip [AG] --

EB: i miss you.  
AG: Well, good!

\-- arachnidsGrip [AG] is idle! --  
\-- arachnidsGrip [AG] is back from idle! --

AG: Me too.  
EB: heh. <3  
AG: <3 I guess.  
AG: Did you change your mind and foist them off on appropriate lusii?   
AG: I'm already pretty far away and it's a TON of fun so far to be on the road 8ut I could always start 8ack if you *REALLY* insist.  
AG: Or you could catch up and we could go on a trip together...  
EB: heh.  
EB: i'll see you in fifteen years, vriska.  
EB: i hope you have fun.  
AG: ...  
AG: I will.  
AG: Try not to die of 8oredom without me.  
AG: Or gru8s, especially don't die of that.  
EB: i won't.   
EB: 8ye then. :::;)

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] blocked arachnidsGrip [AG] --

\--

He unblocks her five months later, a week or so after the eggs have hatched. Three boys, one girl, and they all look identical before their first molt down there. Drew has Vriska's hook on both horns, the shafts wavy like John's. Sara's are coiled snakes studded in little crescent moons. Avy and Kir wear the same straight backswept horns, but mirrored.

He doesn't message her. He just reads her old offline messages, rocking the cradle with his foot.

AG: 8ye, John.  
AG: I'm not saying I'll miss you.  
AG: It's only a few years. We're 8oth immortal, who cares!  
AG: And I'm having so much fun right now. There's so much to explore! So many things to discover, I can't 8elieve I waited so long 8efore going.  
AG: It's at *least* eight tons of fun. Eighty tons!!!!!!!!  
AG: ...  
AG: I'll miss you. Maybe not today, 8ut I will.  
AG: <3


End file.
